From left, Dr Michael Tompsett (UK), Professor Eric Fossum (USA) and Professor Nobukazu Teranishi (Japan) are announced as the winners of the 2017 Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering at Carlton House Terrace on Wednesday, Feb. 1, 2017 in London. Taking a selfie is one of the easiest and quickest things you can do on your smartphone. But as with any landmark invention, it took decades and plenty of graft to develop the camera technology that lives in your pocket. A trio of engineers behind the invention of the image-sensing technology found in billions of smartphones, camera phones, PCs and hospital scanning technology, won the £1 million ($1.3 million) Queen Elizabeth Prize for engineering on Wednesday, and spoke about where the image-sensor technology they developed should go in the future. "I feel gobsmacked and very thankful to the Queen Elizabeth prize for this honor," said one of the engineers, Eric Fossum.

Nearly a decade ago, Comcast promised liberation from the tyranny of the cable box. But today its control seems here to stay--as does big cable's control over how you consume the programming you pay for. This week, the Federal Communications Commission met for the first time under its new chairman, Ajit Pai, a Republican. The original agenda for the meeting included consideration of the agency's latest proposal--advanced under former Democratic chairman Tom Wheeler--to force cable companies to make their services a bit more open. That item disappeared from the agenda--and with it the likelihood that much of anything will change in the world of cable, at least as far as government regulation is concerned.

The face of homebrew, remote-controlled military robotics in Iraq is a man named Ali Hashem al-Daraji, better known by the nickname Abu Ali. In 2014 he was a policeman for Iraq's interior ministry, but in June of that year, when the Iraqi Security Forces collapsed as ISIS took over Mosul, Abu Ali hooked up with the Hashd al Shaabi, or "Popular Mobilization Units," an umbrella organization of anti-ISIS militias, some of which had also fought against US forces during the Iraq War. Before eventually returning to the Iraqi Federal Police last November, Abu Ali fought with a couple of militia organizations across Iraq, was injured by an improvised explosive device in Fallujah, and took a selfie with Qasem Soleimani, the head of Iran's covert-action Qods Force, in charge of Tehran's wars in Iraq and Syria and a sworn enemy of the US. "My purpose was to help the Hashd with minimal casualties," he says. Abu Ali produces little wheeled robots designed to allow troops to fire from behind cover.

The Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (CFI) invites applications for a postdoctoral Research Associate for the project'Policy, Responsible Innovation and the Future of AI'. The appointment will be for 3 years, and is based in Cambridge. CFI is an exciting new interdisciplinary research centre addressing the challenges and opportunities posed by artificial intelligence (AI). Funded by the Leverhulme Trust, CFI is based at the University of Cambridge, with partners in the University of Oxford, Imperial College, and UC Berkeley, and close links with industry partners and policymakers. This project examines the prospects for a robust safety and benefits culture within the AI industry, in anticipation of the development of increasingly powerful AI systems that will present ever-greater real-world opportunities and challenges.

Angling to pre-empt complaints over Japan's perennial trade surplus with the U.S., Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reportedly plans to propose a sweeping economic cooperation initiative meant to create hundreds of thousands of jobs in the U.S. when he meets with President Donald Trump later this month. Abe and Trump are expected to meet on Feb. 10. Major Japanese newspapers cited a draft of the proposal that calls for cooperation on building high-speed trains in the U.S. northeast, Texas and California. Japan would share technology on artificial intelligence, robotics, small-scale nuclear power plants, space and Internet technology. The reports Thursday said the proposed public-private initiative would create several hundred thousand jobs, reports said, and involve $450 billion in new investment.

WikiLeaks has turned its focus to the upcoming French presidential election, revealing that its archives contain thousands of potentially sensitive documents on three candidates. A series of posts on its Twitter account targeted Republican Francois Fillon, far-right leader Marine Le Pen and independent candidate Emmanuel Macron. WikiLeaks claims to have over 3,000 files on Fillon, whose popularity has dropped amid allegations that he paid his wife close to €1 million of public money with little evidence of work. Fillon denies any wrongdoing, but calls for him to drop out of the presidential race are mounting. Le Pen, who is currently leading the polls according to the latest numbers from Elabe, is the subject of a further 1,138 WikiLeaks documents.

The 8-year-old daughter of Anwar al-Awlaki, the radical cleric and U.S. citizen who was killed in a drone strike in 2011, was reportedly among those killed Sunday during a raid in Yemen. The Guardian reported that Nawar al-Awlaki was killed after suffering a gunshot wound to the neck. The girl's grandfather told the paper that he did not believe the girl was targeted. "I don't think this incident was intentional," the former government minister said. He told the paper that the location of the strike was confusing because it was not a hotbed for Al Qaeda, rathera tribal sheikhs fighting the government, which is supported by Iran-backed Houthis.

Artificial intelligence (AI) developed by a University of Cincinnati doctoral graduate was recently assessed by subject-matter expert and retired United States Air Force Colonel Gene Lee - who holds extensive aerial combat experience as an instructor and Air Battle Manager with considerable fighter aircraft expertise - in a high-fidelity air combat simulator. The artificial intelligence, dubbed ALPHA, was the victor in that simulated scenario, and according to Lee, is "the most aggressive, responsive, dynamic and credible AI I've seen to date." Details on ALPHA - a significant breakthrough in the application of what's called genetic-fuzzy systems are published in the most-recent issue of the Journal of Defense Management, as this application is specifically designed for use with Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles (UCAVs) in simulated air-combat missions for research purposes. The tools used to create ALPHA as well as the ALPHA project have been developed by Psibernetix, Inc., recently founded by UC College of Engineering and Applied Science 2015 doctoral graduate Nick Ernest, now president and CEO of the firm; as well as David Carroll, programming lead, Psibernetix, Inc.; with supporting technologies and research from Gene Lee; Kelly Cohen, UC aerospace professor; Tim Arnett, UC aerospace doctoral student; and Air Force Research Laboratory sponsors. ALPHA is currently viewed as a research tool for manned and unmanned teaming in a simulation environment.

An independent report by a group of scientists commissioned by the US Defense Department argues that the increasingly impressive developments in the field of artificial intelligence are in no way a threat to humanity, as some prominent figures have recently suggested. The report's authors say that concern about the development of artificial intelligence comes from excessive media attention by journalists and science fiction writers about the progress of so-called Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), or Strong Artificial Intelligence, relating to attempts to create intelligence in machines that can successfully perform any intellectual task carried out by humans. This generalist approach to artificial intelligence, while obviously provocative and highly (if not excessively) visible, is presently restricted, limited in its progress, and the results of which are far from disturbing. The fears it generates in some quarters do not correspond to the facts: at present, the attention devoted to the development of machines capable of making long-term decisions or thinking and acting like human beings is scarce. On the other hand, the development of artificial intelligence, whether relevant to the DoD or in other areas, focuses more on enhancing the abilities of humans and freeing us from certain tasks, rather that substituting us as such.

One in three NHS trusts are using AI for patient services. Business and government are on a mission to deploy and succeed with AI in healthcare – IBM Watson has been drafted in the fight against cancer, while the NHS is trialling an AI app and working with the likes of Google's Deepmind to improve patient care. It is easy to see why the UK's NHS would be rushing to adopt AI, with the over-burdened, costly and complex infrastructure of the NHS a perfect candidate in which to reap the efficiency and productivity benefits of AI. Although archaic processes still reign supreme in the NHS, new data does suggest that AI is starting to infiltrate and make an impact in trusts around the UK. According to a Freedom of Information request filed by Nuance, one in three NHS trusts are using AI for patient services.